Deep Creek: A Novel

By Dana Hand

One of the Washington Post’s Best Novels of the Year: A “fascinating” tale of murder in 1880s Idaho, based on real historical events (The Daily Beast).

Idaho Territory, June 1887. A small-town judge takes his young daughter fishing, and she catches a man. Another body surfaces, then another. The final toll: over thirty Chinese gold miners brutally murdered. Their San Francisco employer hires Idaho lawman Joe Vincent to solve the case.
 
Soon he journeys up the wild Snake River with Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a métis mountain guide with too many secrets. As they track the killers across the Pacific Northwest, through haunted canyons and city streets, each must put aside lies and old grievances to survive a quest that will change them forever.
 
Deep Creek is a historical thriller inspired by actual events and people: the 1887 massacre of Chinese miners in remote and beautiful Hells Canyon, the brave judge who went after their slayers, and the sham race-murder trial that followed.
 
In this enhanced ebook edition, Deep Creek teams history with invention, setting authentic photographs and maps alongside the authors’ brilliant fiction to illuminate this long-forgotten American tragedy, in a tale of courage and redemption, loss and love.
 
The Washington Post has named Deep Creek a Best Novel of 2010, and The Daily Beast/Newsweek ranked it among the dozen best Western novels since 1960.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9780547488578

Dana Hand

Dana Hand is the pen name of Will Howarth and Anne Matthews, who live and work in Princeton, New Jersey. Under their own names, they have published eighteen nonfiction books on American history, literature, and public issues.

Book preview

title page

Contents

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Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Author's Note

PART I

Flood

Witness

Frost Moon

Trackers

Brightness

Upriver

Findings

Victory Meat

Elements

White Ghosts

Mission Boy

Imbalance

Mr. Salem

Inner Box

News

Reward

PART II

Homecomings

Independence

Fit Company

Hell Money

Raptor Glance

Upcountry

Going In

Crossriver

Elsewhere

Summer Family

Our Disasters

Camas Lily

Big Hole

Full Moon

Deep Summer

Vows

PART III

Beaded Sheath

Facing South

Respect

Good Families

Evergreen

Long Night

Reunited

Red Ledger

Tactics

Objections

Witnesses

Secrets

Compensation

Free

Wider Views

Dug Bar

AFTERWORD

Appendix for Enhanced Digital Edition

Snake River Country, 1887

Table of Contents: Text

Character Profiles

Pronunciation Guide

Author Profiles

Dana Hand and Deep Creek

Writing History as Fiction: A Note

Questions for Reading Groups

Excerpts from Major Reviews

Historical Sources

Copyright © 2010 by Dana Hand

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Hand, Dana.

Deep Creek / Dana Hand.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-547-23748-0

1. Snake River Massacre, 1887—Fiction. 2. Gold miners—Crimes against—

Fiction. 3. Chinese—Crimes against—Fiction. 4. United States marshals—

Fiction. 5. Mountaineering guides (Persons)—Fiction. 6. Métis—Fiction.

7. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 8. Hells Canyon (Idaho and Or.)—

Race relations—History— 19th century—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.A69845D44 2010

813'.6—dc22 2009015395

eISBN 978-0-547-48857-8

v2.1117

For the two Marys

BASED ON

ACTUAL EVENTS

PART I

Flood

JUNE 3, 1887

MAYBE I'LL CATCH a sturgeon, Nell Vincent told her father. Maybe two."

Using what?

Nell held up a twist of frayed red yarn.

Good choice, said Joe. After five days of rain, the Snake River was running fast and high. The white sturgeon that trolled its depths grew eighteen feet long and could weigh a ton.

Well, nothing beat experience. Nell was small for twelve but hardy, with straight brown braids that fell nearly to her sash and freckles no buttermilk wash could dim.

Or maybe I'll start with some trout, and work up.

They smiled at each other. Half-dried mud covered the Vincents' best picnic spot, and over on the Washington shore, piles of brush and fencing clogged sandbar and cove. But Nell loved to fish, and Joe figured his youngest deserved a treat, even a medal. Her older brother Lon had spent the week of rainstorm sleeping, her sister Letty, sulking. Nell wanted to collect salt and turtle eggs and homestead in a cave, like the Swiss Family Robinson; she had it all planned.

Beside a young cottonwood, his daughter spread their smuggled feast: six ham biscuits and a jar of lukewarm lemonade. Joe did his best, then stretched out in the patchy shade to recover. A pity he had not brought along some bismuth powder.

Nell watched her father sleep. He was a neat, durable man with a shock of coarse gray-brown hair and a lined, clean-shaven face. At the moment he was snoring lightly. He would turn fifty-seven this year and needed his rest. Nell saw no reason to wake him and no reason to wait. She scrambled down the bank and threw out the silk line, swinging it toward open water. To the west, morning sun warmed the low dun hills to copper and gold.

Joe lay on the carriage rug, keeping an eye on her out of habit, but Nell was old enough to cast unsupervised. He went back to sleep, for real this time. Tethered beside the buggy, his bay saddle mare, Trim, nosed at a stand of red willow.

Ten minutes later, Nell felt the hook catch and tug. The rod bent low, then lower.

Pa, bring the net! I got a big one!

Take your time, Joe said, watching a jay stalk the last biscuit. Nell's estimates ran high. Then he heard her agonized whisper.

"Pa!"

He sat up and stared at her catch: an arm rising in the water. He floundered into the shallows to seize the small, bloated body at shoulder and thigh. Long black hair, unbound, trailed over his hands like river weed. Poor lady, poor lady. He turned the corpse over, then saw a gunshot wound in the upper chest, the face chopped like cabbage, the genitals hacked away. Nell had thrown in a line and caught a man.

Joe's best fishing rod floated nearby, still hooked to one ear. Upstream he glimpsed another figure lodged in driftwood, pale among pale logs, and ten yards beyond, a third dark head. That victim might never come to shore. Joe saw the north-running current find and take it. Behind him, Nell moaned.

"Get back to the rig, Nellie. Now."

Two hours later, Lewiston deputies had dragged ashore six flayed and battered corpses, all male, all Chinese. Joe looked away as Marshal Harry Akers bent over, hands braced on thighs, breathing hard. The deputies were country-bred, and Joe a Union veteran, but Akers was a town man.

Judge, can you take this over? I got a lot to do. A lot.

Joe nodded. He was police judge now, and the Chinese case would land with him anyway. He left a silent Nell at her grandparents' tall brick house on Main Street, then sent a deputy to find the local doctor who doubled as town coroner. Decades ago Henry Stanton, an ex—Royal Navy surgeon, came inland from Vancouver to practice in Idaho's gold country. His neat full beard was gray now, the genial face grim. Joe held open the leather satchel as his friend laid forceps and tenon saw beside the first victim.

Throat cut, said Henry. Very slowly. It's butchery.

Massacre, said Joe.

Three of the Chinese dead were naked and bound hand and foot, faces ripped by animal bites. Maybe canine, maybe feline; the wilder reaches of the Snake River above Lewiston still harbored puma and wolf. All the men pulled from the Snake were shot, though some backs and skulls also bore deep ax wounds. One victim was beheaded, the ghastly cranium wrapped in a ragged blue coat and tied to the waist. The rest were castrated. Two were gutted like deer. A skillful job, said Henry, when pressed.

Poor devils, poor sad bastards, Joe murmured as he walked the line of shrouded bodies. He knew a crew of Chinese gold miners had wintered up the Snake. He'd even talked to a couple, the morning they left. September of '86? October? His town logs would say. Twelve clothbound ledgers still sat on Joe's desk, one for each year spent as Lewiston's marshal. He should have given the whole set to Akers back in November, as a post-election courtesy, but Joe wasn't that sure his successor could read.

My fault, Joe thought. A river full of dead men. My mistake. He pulled the vinegar-soaked bandana back over nose and mouth, then turned a notebook page, slapping away flies. The battlefield stink was getting worse. Beside him the doctor probed and measured, his bare arms dark to the elbow with river mud and human rot.

Once they tried to sit beside the Snake and rest, but moments later Henry was wading out again. The deputies had missed one. Joe gave the doctor a hand back to shore, then hauled the dead man halfway up the slope. Maggots, pale and writhing, webbed the nostrils and open mouth.

Corneas slit, said Henry.

Before death or after? Joe asked.

Before, I suspect.

Together they heaved the sodden weight toward their riverbank morgue.

At sunset Joe crossed Tammany Creek and turned his mare toward the big shingled and turreted house on the hill. He sat on the stable mounting block to pull off his boots, which smelled of corpse. Likely they always would. He glanced up and saw lamplight in Nell's room. His father-in-law, Alonzo Leland, the town newspaper publisher, must have brought her home.

The front door was locked, so Joe went around to the kitchen. The Vincents had lived in this new house only since Christmas. A dozen packing crates still sat in the parlor, leaking straw, and once again the whole downstairs smelled of fresh paint. Lib and the man from Hale & Cooper were deadlocked over the merits of ivory versus cream.

Alonzo waylaid him in the hallway, hungry for a Teller exclusive.

What's this about dead Chinks in the Snake?

Joe put one hand on the banister. Can't tell you anything, Lon.

I've got a deadline, J. K., said Alonzo behind him.

Trousers soaked, back aching, Joe Vincent climbed on.

Witness

JUNE 4, 1887

Lewiston, Idaho in 1887–89. Nez Perce County Historical Society.

AS JOE RODE PAST the brick storefronts of downtown Lewiston, he saw the glint of standing water, block after block. He could put a name and history to each drowned yard and lot. Telegraph and gasworks were still out, cordwood littered every boardwalk, and at the crossroads near the Unitarian church horses splashed knee-deep. The Sparbers' big chicken coop was gone, swept away. Old Mr. Sparber waved down Joe to complain, forgetting that he was no longer marshal.

In town the daily round had resumed: Joe saw the cart from Alleman's Dairy cut past a line of hay wagons, while at riverside, dockworkers unloaded the Portland overnight, the first steamer in days to brave the swollen Snake. Akers was indeed behind on every one of his duties: getting medicine to outlying families, feed to cut-off stock, notices to the Teller, cats out of trees. Pleas for aid were still coming in from all over Nez Perce County.

Not my worry. Joe turned onto a deserted, muddy A Street and hitched Trim to the porch rail of the one-story Beuk Aie Temple, listening to the nasal clatter of Cantonese within. The caretaker led him down the dim, narrow room. Along the gilded altar stood incense burners and porcelain wine cups, plus five sets of chopsticks, one for each temple deity. A dozen thin, tired, wary Chinese watched Joe approach. Nearby stood a C Street grain merchant, ready to translate, but the lead miner spoke fair English.

Lee She, Joe wrote. Occupation: junior boss, gold-mining crew. Born: Canton. Probably in his early twenties, if that; manner composed, eyes lightless.

How big was your group? Joe asked.

Forty-four, sir.

The merchant flinched, just a hair. Joe wondered why.

All from around here?

Yes, sir.

The mining-camp survivors waited near Lee She, taking care to look away from the da bidze judge. Young, slight, and wiry, most of them. So foreign, with those long rattail queues and shaved foreheads, but tough enough to take eight bad months up the Snake.

Where was your camp? Joe asked Lee She.

Deep Creek, for sleeping, sir. Robinson Gulch, for the work.

Six weeks ago the Chinese expedition leader had sent this smaller party to prospect farther south. Chea Po, Joe wrote. Senior boss. Home: Canton. On returning to Deep Creek, Lee She and his men found only burned wreckage and murdered compatriots, too mutilated to recognize. The miners' largest craft lay stranded on the rocky shore, oars broken, bottom chopped out. A half-mile away, Robinson Gulch was a charnel house. Fourteen miners lay buried upriver, Lee She told Joe. Hacked, bludgeoned, castrated, faceless. The missing: probably thrown into the Snake.

Joe added a row of stars to his notebook page. That timing fitted the flood dates and condition of bodies recovered at Lewiston all too well. He did recall that the Deep Creek crew included two boys, unusual in an over-winter camp, and asked about them.

Gone.

Joe looked at the young man's clenched and callused hands and changed the subject. Their venture's backer was...?

The Sam Yup Company. In San Francisco, the translator told him. Joe knew it, dimly, as one of several big Chinese labor exchanges there.

A benevolent society, said the translator, not elaborating.

Lewiston barbershop and tavern talk about the Snake River dead seesawed daily, and the favored line was, Well, at least they ain't from around here. But Chea Po's mining crew was local. Joe was stuck and he knew it. As police judge he could rule on civil and criminal cases within his jurisdiction, which in practice meant all of Nez Perce County. A few years back the territorial legislature in Boise trimmed down Nez Perce; it was still larger than Rhode Island.

The big river marked the border between Idaho Territory and the State of Oregon, and both Robinson Gulch and Deep Creek lay on the Snake's western bank. Maybe he could hand off these killings to Oregon authorities. But around four in the afternoon Henry Stanton came in, nodded to the Beuk Aie elders, and opened his hand to show Joe evidence from the final autopsies. In the rainbow light of a lantern hung with colored beads, Joe saw the lead gleam. Two dozen bullet rounds, more than enough to force an inquest.

That's it?

Henry shook his head. That's one man.

Three days later, Dr. Henry Stanton, coroner, and the Honorable Joseph Kimball Vincent, police judge, issued their ruling: mass murder. Joe still had no idea how to solve the legal puzzle of aliens residing in a territory yet killed in a state by persons unknown. A day spent reading case law showed only the extent of the maze. As a Lewiston magistrate, he seemed to have as much jurisdiction as anyone.

The Beuk Aie elders wanted him to keep local Chinese safe. That much was clear. Yet when Joe went to tell Lee She that a court proceeding was under way, the Deep Creek miners had vanished, every one. Halfway to Canada, Joe figured. He ran over the count in his head. Lee She's burials upriver. Seven bodies recovered near Lewiston. Two washed ashore at the Almota steamboat landing; a frightened farmer rode in yesterday with the news. Marshal Akers sent him straight to Judge Vincent. The sheriff at Pen-a-wa-wa, forty miles off, reported four more. Joe began composing his telegram to the Sam Yup's head office.

The reply was swift. A Company representative had left San Francisco to take a full report; please afford every assistance. The Imperial Chinese government planned to protest this outrage in the strongest terms and demand reparation from American authorities.

At his office desk Joe turned the telegram over, then peered into the envelope. No follow-up, no softening addendum, no mention of paying expenses. Wonderful.

Lewiston was no town for secrets. Lake's jewelry store housed a Bell telephone exchange, where service was so erratic that its twenty-eight subscribers usually sent a child down the street with a note, like everyone else. The Western Union clerk was a gossip, never more than when a silver dollar lay on the counter. Joe knew the man gave Alonzo Leland first crack at the juicier wire stories. Confidential public business was a lost cause. He opened the latest Teller, expecting a furious editorial on heathen meddling.

The news columns yielded only one paragraph, a masterpiece of misdirection squeezed between an ad for John Carey's pack train and a report of amateur theatricals over at Pomeroy.

A boatload of Chinamen came down Snake River on Saturday last and brought the news that another boat load of Chinese had been murdered about 150 miles above here by some unknown parties; they claim that the Chinamen, some ten in number, who were murdered had upward of $3000 on them, having been mining on the river this past year. They found their boat with blankets and provisions in, but three of the Chinamen have been found, and three in the river, two of whom were shot and the third could not be captured. Some think the Chinamen murdered them, while others think Indians or whites, but the mystery may never be solved.

One hundred fifty miles? Sixty was more like it. And three thousand in gold dust? No survivor mentioned any such amount, nor would, not to a foreign devil judge. As usual, the Teller was best appreciated as fiction. One fact would not change: between Canton and Lewiston lay nine thousand miles. A long way to come to die.

Henry Stanton stood in the doorway, waiting for a decision.

Flood or no flood, some evidence must survive, Joe said after a while. I guess I could charter a boat and go see.

Chatter. Under pressure, his Massachusetts accent turned more pronounced. The doctor had not heard it this strong in years.

"No one rows up the Snake," Stanton said.

Joe slung the broadsheet into his kindling box.

It's a drought year. At least we'll see the rocks we hit. Hand-line past the big rapids, chance the rest. Two, three weeks round-trip. I need a close-in look at whoever did it. I doubt they've gone far. It takes a fair-sized crew to slaughter so many. All else aside, murder on this scale is hard work.

Didn't stop your lot at Antietam, said Stanton. Or mine ever, really. He paused. "Didn't stop you at Big Hole. So I hear."

Joe was on his feet, not knowing how he got there.

Christ almighty, Henry, sometimes I don't understand you. You bring this up now, after ten years?

Stanton waited, arms folded, watching.

I sent my shots high, said Joe Vincent. He turned away.

Frost Moon

OCTOBER 1886

UNDER A FULL FROST MOON, two boys ran. At thirteen and eleven they often worked shirttail and barefoot, but Elder Boss wanted every crewman outfitted for cold weather, so now Lim Dow and Chu Yap wore denim pants, blue padded coats, and stiff new boots, all a size too large.

Ahead, a train of ox carts filled the road, bound for the Clearwater diggings. Dow pulled his cousin into the ditch just in time. Two Chinese out so late, even young ones, could easily get shot. Dow lay in the weeds, face in his arms, rabbit-still. Yap peered up nonetheless and saw by swinging lantern light a pale curved horn as long as his arm, and an inquiring dark eye.

An hour later, the boys silently studied the narrow river town of Lewiston, nestled below a line of bluffs where the placid Clearwater met the larger, faster Snake. Moonlight picked out a switchback road down to the sleeping port. Yap pointed to the distant docks. Lanterns, moving. They ran on.

In the shadow of riverside warehouses, Chea Po surveyed the six big boats, careful as always to school his broad, mild face into sternness. His young underboss, Lee She, was on hands and knees in the lead vessel, checking waterproof tarpaulins lashed over tents and bedrolls. Chea Po urged three last miners down the boarding ladders.

Almost the last. Each river craft, broad and sturdy as a dory, held seven men. A crew of forty-two was a good roster, two desirable even numbers that together made six, signifying smooth and easy. Chea Po liked the symmetry of having four groups of eleven miners each, if he added in the two boys hired at the last minute. Wherever they were. Possibly two boys counted as one man, bringing the crew total to forty-three, whose sum was seven, the number of anger and desolation. No. Try again.

(When Lee She first heard about Chea Po's extra recruits, he put a quick hand to the lucky fish amulet at his throat. In Cantonese the word four sounds very like the word death. Yes, forty-two men plus two boys made forty-four, Chea Po conceded, but two fours were eight, baat, which rhymes with faat, wealth. Eight, the most fortunate number of all, would rule their winter venture.)

The faces of his crewmen lay in shadow, but Chea Po caught traded glances, tiny shrugs. The moon was setting. Up in Lewiston he could see a scatter of lamplight. Past time to be gone. As the two bosses bent to work the last boat ropes free, they heard the clatter of feet on planking. Lee She reached out and caught both boys as they slid to a stop.

Marshal Vincent saw us, Elder Boss, Dow whispered, bowing. He asked where we were going so early.

And what did you tell him?

Up Snake River for gold, Yap said proudly. He was very impressed.

Lee She swore; now a da bidze lawman might come visit the mining camp. Chea Po knew they had to get under way before Vincent arrived at the docks. At least the boys' boast of good English seemed no lie. Lee She had said they were fluent, but Chea Po was no judge.

Get in, he said, aiming a cuff at Dow's ear, to satisfy the watching eyes.

Trackers

JUNE 13, 1887

ON MONDAY MORNING Joe sat in his office, reading police logs. A runaway four-horse team on Main Street, no damage. A dog barking at night near the lumberyard, owner unknown. Boys throwing pebbles at churches during service; complainant not close enough to take names. Sabbath disturbance in Lewiston used to mean a dozen drunks galloping down Main Street, firing as they rode. He yawned and walked out to the side yard to check on Trim.

Why, ma'am, I remember back in '71 ..., he told her, using his best old-codger voice. Trim laid her ears flat and kept grazing. Christ. Not even appreciated by his own horse.

Back to the log. Aha—a case of assault. A pig bit the finger of a Spokane visitor. Joe knew both pig and visitor and was not surprised. One large panther seen crossing the yard up at John Shutte's place. Maybe Shutte could use the barking dog.

Joe turned the page. His town office was a converted barn on a corner lot. Ten years back he filled the stalls with bookcases (glassfronted, to thwart the mice), brought in a roll-top desk and a black potbelly stove, then stood an army cot under the old hayloft. The wide plank floor stayed bare. When thinking over cases, Joe needed to sweep. He had the cleanest floor in Lewiston.

A stranger leaned over the barn's half-door: a young Chinese.

Judge Vincent? I'm Lee Loi, from the Sam Yup Company.

He was about twenty-three, wearing a dark suit with a silver watch chain slung across the brocade vest. Under a roll-brim derby his black hair was cut short. Joe stared a second longer than he should have. He'd expected a white man.

Good to meet you, Mr. Lee.

The Sam Yup emissary looked gratified.

I usually get called Loi, so I'm glad of the correct form.

I was a Forty-Niner, Joe told him, by way of explanation. Pull up a chair, sir.

Lee Loi stuck out his hand. Joe felt cornered but took it. He had never shaken with a Chinese before, not as an equal. And how in hell was he going to house the fellow? The Sam Yup man would have to take meals—specially catered, no doubt—in the private parlor at Raymond House. And sleep in Joe's own rooms there. Joe foresaw a long week on the army cot.

He soon discovered that Lee Loi ate anything, often, and chewed as much gum as Lonny and Letty put together. The Company representative was also a fast, careful worker, easy to deal with as they certified descriptions of the dead miners. He arrived too late to examine any bodies; Dr. Stanton tried to preserve a few with formaldehyde and arsenic, but putrefaction was too advanced. Any bone man sent upriver to boil and smoke remains for shipment back to China would have a tough job. Joe decided to issue the most comprehensive John Doe complaint and arrest warrant he could construct. He low-balled the number of victims, knowing a higher count might frighten off someone with a useful lead. He could revise upward later.

...Lee Loi, first being duly sworn, complains and accuses Richard Doe, John Doe and others, names unknown, of the crime of murder by feloniously, willfully and with malice aforethought cut with an axe and shot with a gun or pistol loaded with powder and ball, which they, and others, names unknown, did hold in their hands, kill and murder ten Chinamen, belonging to what is known as the Sam Yup Co. Said murders having been committed on Snake River in the State of Oregon, Wallowa County, and Nez Perce County, Idaho Territory, on or about May 25th 1887 to the best of his knowledge and belief...

Now young Mr. Lee sat at Joe's desk, double-copying documents in English and Chinese, one set bound for the Sam Yup, the other for San Francisco's Imperial Consulate. Joe watched his visitor look around for a pen-wiper. Lee Loi proved to be China-born, sent to the States in childhood for schooling, although at Yale College he apparently specialized in the study of baseball, the New York Metropolitans in particular.

Joe could tell Mr. Lee was used to getting his own way, Chinaman or not. The voice, the stance, were not Oriental, as Joe understood it, nor Western, in the Idaho sense. In his own New England youth Joe had waited on drawling, well-born East Coast boys, and Lee Loi had all of their cocky, slouching ease.

Joe wondered how Lee would get on with Lewiston's Chinese. Most lived bachelor-style, crowded in meager lodgings along C Street, where small dark shops sold them secondhand blankets, sieves, pick handles, and the soft hot dumplings called won ton: swallowing clouds. Either they were miners, hard-bitten as Lee She's lot, or else they worked in town as cooks, houseboys, and laundrymen. In the land they called Gam Saan, Golden Mountain, their only goals seemed to be getting rich and going home.

Meanwhile they flocked to the Hip Sip hall adjoining the temple. Our fraternal lodge, the Chinese told white Lewiston. Like your Masons. A public scribe, a bowl of slow-cooked soup, a loan for the needy: the Hip Sip offered it all. Customers arrived from dawn to midnight, drawn by a triangle of yellow cloth flying over the door. As marshal, Joe had walked through the public rooms, smelled the hot cooking oil and cheap tobacco, heard the roar of talk and the wail of the caller at the fan-tan tables. Once he'd asked the owner for a translation. Buy the corner, buy a twist, buy and make money, buy, buy, buy.

Lee Loi asked if Joe had local suspects for the Deep Creek murders. Joe dug around, then handed over a Teller clipping from April, headed A Little Mystery. Out of habit he still cut items from the region's papers, then let them compost in a bottom drawer.

There are reports of a band of horse thieves over in Oregon, 25–30 of them, well armed and energetic. Their range is the little grass valleys nestled between high, precipitous and ragged cliffs and mountains. These valleys have lots of bunch grass for stock. Hundreds of cattle and horses are run across the Snake and disposed of to unsuspecting buyers in our region. Men of Lewiston should get up a party and break up this gang.

Rustlers were a staple of Territory journalism, the sure sign of a slow week.

It's a start, Joe said. Lee began taking notes. Joe could usually read upside down, but not this time; the Sam Yup man had small, quick handwriting, and all his entries were in Chinese.

The two investigators began searching for anyone who knew the Snake River dead: dry-goods merchants, moneylenders, crewmates from past jobs. Beuk Aie officials produced a dozen candidates to interview, but Lee Loi said he was getting nowhere.

The more time Joe spent in the Chinese district, the less he understood it. He liked some of what he saw in warehouse and counting room, and always had—the graceful blue-and-white jars of preserved ginger, the ducks baked to succulent redness, the iron courtesies. The endless hawking and spitting did not bother him much; every bank and church in white Lewiston kept cuspidors for tuberculars and tobacco chewers. But he did not linger by any Chinese market garden on fertilizing day, not when the proprietor moved from row to row with a hoe and a bucket of fresh human dung.

Two days of trailing Lee through low, dark rooms made Joe's head ache. Talk, talk, a river of noise. Sometimes he thought he caught the mining bosses' names: Chew Po, Lee Shiu. Though Joe was no great size, among so many small, anxious strangers he felt enormous, nose and feet especially. Lee Loi, gabbing at his elbow, was big for a Celestial and in bounding health; Joe chalked it up to a schoolboy diet of codfish and baked beans. Mostly Lee seemed to issue orders, then expect locals to jump. Joe guessed the Sam Yup man was high-caste.

Also highhanded. Once Lee pushed a miner against a wall and shouted in his face like a young demon, until the man hunched to the ground, whispering replies. A few steps down the street and Lee was all sunshine, discoursing on the stellar pitching of the Detroit Wolverines. Joe saw the bullied miner stand up and make a gesture at Lee's back that even a da bidze knew was obscene. The Company did not seem beloved by its rank and file.

Back at Joe's barn, Lee said he didn't much care that the Deep Creek underboss and his men had fled. The Sam Yup was spared arguing over lost wages in cases of disappearing to start over. All that mattered now was the murder investigation.

Again Joe explained the Idaho-Oregon jurisdictional tangle, the wilderness conditions on the upper Snake, the undoubted destruction of evidence by the May flood, and Lewiston's limited appetite for solving an all-Chinese crime. Bury and move on, that was the local sentiment.

Lee Loi leaned forward. He looked anxious.

I want to hire you to lead the case, sir, on a private basis. I don't see any conflict. My Company and my government would like this resolved, and I expect you would too.

You need someone younger, Joe told him. By about thirty years. I have dyspepsia and a bad foot. Try the federal marshals out in Portland. Or else get the Pinkertons.

Please, sir, Lee said. Please. You were recommended in the highest of terms. You've been marshal twice, I understand, and probate judge, and justice of the peace, and federal commissioner, and territorial representative. A most distinguished record. Which is why the Sam Yup Company would be honored to offer a thousand dollars for your time and trouble.

Joe tipped back his chair. This two-year appointment as police judge was a face-saver. Arraignments, bail hearings, misdemeanors. Small beer. He'd never lost an election before, never. Well, fifty-six was nothing. He could still ride all day and read all night. The sooner he closed out this Chinese matter, the better. And the money was astounding.

I run an auction business, you know, and a hotel. This is a busy time for me. I'm sorry.

I'm authorized to go a little higher, sir. Fifteen hundred?

Lee would never make an auctioneer.

Who did this recommending?

I'm not at liberty to say, Judge. My apologies. But your reputation for square dealing precedes you. Do you need ... to consult your wife, perhaps?

No, said Joe. "Have you

Reviews for Deep Creek

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Deep Creek by Dana Hand is actually the first novel by non-fiction historians Will Howarth and Anne Matthews. Based on a real life crime, this book tells the story of how a small town judge and his young daughter discover the murdered and mutilated body of a Chinese miner. This was just the first of over thirty bodies of Chinese miners that were brutally murdered and discarded. Some washed down the Snake River that borders Oregon, Idaho and Washington while many others were found at their camp up the river in the remote Hell’s Canyon. These miners had been sent to Deep Creek by the Sam Yup Company of San Francisco, a large Chinese labor exchange company.Soon the judge, along with two others, travel up the river to investigate. Along with the judge is Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator and Grace Sundown, who is along as their tracker. Very quickly they come to understand who did the murders, but as they deepen their investigation into why this happened, they uncover a land-grabbing conspiracy that involves some of the most prominent members of Lewiston, including members of the judge’s own family. Even when some of the murderers are brought to trial the locals neither cared enough about the Chinese victims or the horrible way they were killed. The accused were acquitted.I found Deep Creek to be a gripping historical novel that made for a compelling and challenging read. Although in real life no one was ever charged with this mass murder, the authors have delivered a complex, interesting story that serves to illuminate many of the prejudices and deeply rooted racism that the Chinese faced when they came to America seeking a new way of life.

[jodyn-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A lean, subtle, layered tale of the best and worst of the Old West, set at the cusp of the modern age (1887-92). Decent yet complicated protagonists, alarming villains, a really touching love story, and a murderous clash of four cultures (Chinese, Native American, Yankee, Southern.) Not at all the pleasantly diverting genre book I expected. This is literature.

[cecie-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a great read--can't stop thinking about it. It's an imaginative recreation of an actual American crime, done very well. The characters are incredibly real and you really feel for them as they attempt justice for Chinese gold miners murdered in Hells Canyon, against a chilling array of villains, some respectable, some not. A little challenging to read, because the roots of the case turn out to be deeper in the past than it seems at first, but if you pay reasonable attention, all the pieces of the story come together in a satisfying, character-driven way. The writing is beautiful but not fancy, and the Western landscape comes wonderfully alive. Love the ending.

[callied-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I don't think I've ever read a Western before. This was just great. I felt like I was there. Wish I was still; Deep Creek is one of those (rare) books that you don't want to end.

[kencross-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Best novel of the West I've read since Angle of Repose, and a great job of making the past feel immediate. Because it is based on real events (the massacre of over 30 Chinese gold miners in 1887) the way the historical material is woven in is most intriguing. As far as I can tell, even the smallest details of place and time are on target, which is what makes the imagined parts so persuasive. The authors write very well, and never preach or push an agenda, just show you what it must have been like for all involved. Their various fates mattered a lot to me by the end of the book. The long love story of Joe and Grace is exceptional, and so is Lee's journey to manhood. Villains: lots of them, and damn scary. Also scary: the way many of the prejudices of 1887 are still out there, thriving.

[kraaivrouw · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read this because I don't usually read books in the Western genre and this looked like it would be doable - historical fiction based on an actual massacre of Chinese miners and one lawman's obsessive struggle to see their killers brought to justice. Great, right? Not so much.This was co-written by two authors who normally publish non-fiction history and it shows. The book jumps all over the place in tone and style making it very difficult to keep track of the relatively small number of characters. Ultimately the book is defeated by the inability of its writers to work together seamlessly. I think I also wanted the book to be more pulpy - the story has oodles of potential for playing with the conventions of the genre, but the authors didn't do that, either. Instead they settled for a really dry inexpertly written kind of Western kind of romance kind of historical fiction kind of novel. Bleh.